Blue Smiles
by Settely
Summary: a kink meme prompt: a couple of months after the war MShepard develops a severe case of PTSD while Kaidan is away on duty; he does not want any help because of his hero status and eventually turns to drugs Aria gladly provides; slash Kaidan/MShepard
1. one

There are days that keep repeating themselves. An artificial sunrise, a kiss onto the cheek from someone seen only for a moment, congratulations and references, emails thanking for some interference some time ago that concern the army, family matters and other gibberish. They all can be considered a flicker of colour unnoticeable in the sea of greyness encircling senses every other moment which should matter more to you, should prove that all of what you have done had sense. Such a thought ceases to be able to function independently without a good dose of sarcasm however.

People say they envy you. After all, a good position and abilities such as yours are a miracle not so easily obtainable, something vital for preserving the universe among other god-like figures. You are a star. You are everything to many. Some soldiers know your name from the vids, other recognise the face from the Alliance's adverts, a few mistake you for the one being in charge of the whole army. You cannot blame then but the knowledge does not make it easier to swallow the lump and flash an apologetic smile while clenching a fist in one of your pockets. Easy there, Shepard. A symbol cannot be angry at its followers, now can it? You tell yourself to relax, time and time again, because there's no need to have a nervous breakdown in front of a whole crowd that hears the name but cannot put a face to it, fantasises about an idea and not a human being made of flesh and blood like them. It is how it is, no matter the epoch and no matter the actors currently occupying the scene among different and yet fitting settings. After all, human nature always stays the same.

A half-finished glass of whiskey glimmers underneath the neon lamps in front of your outstretched palm while the silhouettes of the asari dancers melt within the smoke a few metres ahead. You cannot remember much from what you have been doing tonight. Got a few shots and smokes the head feels already quite heavy with, saw what could have been seen and later gossiped about. Ha, Shepard, the saviour of the galaxy drowning his sadness in a siddy pit not much more honourable than Chora's Den. At times, you like to toy with the thought of someone noticing your hunched down back at a far-away table, someone coming all the way up and running a sympathetic, calloused hand across the back. Someone with stubble barely covering their cheeks, the army blues as clear in the dimmed light as water in an ocean on their shoulders. Someone ready to say that you couldn't have done anything differently, that you were a hero the moments you could have been and there is so much more awaiting, you just need to reach out a hand and try to grasp at it. You know, however, that you would sooner brush the person away than listen to anything they would have to say. It is easier to dream such situations than act upon anything resembling. A back-up plan for an mirage seems less pathetic than chickening out in real life, than looking closer and admitting there is a problem. There is no problem, none that you are aware of. At least that is what you like to tell yourself while the weekend's hours tick away and the drinks start slowly to change their colours and flavours.

It's all about survival now, isn't it? A path of red, green, blue or white. Colours spinning, music pounding louder, loud enough to make the screaming fade into the darkness. Thirst for more drinks, more movement, more thoughts concentrating on the familiar silhouette easily seen there, at the back of the bar, in front of you, everywhere. It's your private little heaven. No one should be left alone without the possibility of seeing just a glimpse of one, right?

Aria is always there, lurking in the shadows and smiling her Cheshire cat's grin. She knows what makes you tick nowadays and easily obtains anything one might ask for in a place like those of hers. Turian handywork, krogan toxic things some tried experimenting with, human sources of good quality, you name you, she gives it to you at half a price.


	2. two

Aria says that she can comfort you because she knows how. A piece of heaven in Purgatory, a piece of hell in Afterlife. The powder silences the doubts for a moment, a dose lasting for more than a couple of shots and lazy smiles you meet the crowd with. Relaxed. Smiling. Blind and helpless but at least not sobbing in the corner. It's better this way. It's always better not to think too much.

You can feel her eyes being at you when the music floods in and your limbs start living on their own. You do not have to worry now. It's all in the movement, all in the moment. It's you, the pounding of your heart and people pressing forward, from the back and sideways. It's finally silent in your head. Thane sips a drink in the far corner of the room, Mordin shuffles cards in front of laughing Ashley near the entrance. Everything spins, spins like in those old Alliance machines getting marines ready for flying back on Earth and it's blissful.

You feel empty and so are your pockets when you leave for the hotel in the morning. There is a bottle and a few pills waiting for you on the table. They are your stash for the upcoming week. The blue one for the smile. The yellow one for the manageable void. The green one for sleeping in silence after the boy fled from your dreams. Nowadays it's only darkness filled with the rambling of gunshots, whispering and frozen frames composed of the vids and memories. There are faces that you might have seen only once, strings of words dissolving into buzzing of an out of order radio and shadows of silhouettes out of your reach. You keep on running, keep on turning your head round and round but there is nothing you can do and so the thresher maw shushes the agonizing soldiers, Kelly screams while being trapped inside a glowing coffin and Toomb's haunted mutterings cease to be heard. Every night, with bodies swapping their destinations and owners, phrases uttered at you with difficulty but the guilt stays as active as before. Suffocating. There is nothing that can bring you awake if you do not take the already known for a while paths, do not try to shush the noise. Blackness is all you need, blackness like the silk dresses the strippers on higher levels of Omega wear, the colour of desolated planets' skies at night, with no visible stars hidden behind cloudlets of space dust.

You can wait some more weeks to be able to see the sun again, the real, beautiful and solid one. After all, the sun would come back, right? Even though it kept silent for the past days, for the past month and your ways parted with unsaid things on minds, not looking back until it was too late to catch the other's eye. It would be sunny once again, after the prolonging night. And the meds? Well, they made it all bearable and worth waiting.

"You alright there, Loco?" Vega asks you on Monday, when the shore live ends and the Normandy welcomes you with its cold metal and plastic screens. You can't be bothered to answer anything, not that there is any easy answer. He is cleaning the guns while Steve taps at the computer, smiling when he notices you coming their way. The expression changes quickly into one of concern though but before anything more happens, you grab the rifle you came for in the first place and stumbles blindly back towards the lift. As long as a problem isn't spoken of or named, it does not exist. It's a simple truth, something frightening and yet soothing. No talking, no problem.

Easy as that. You can live on with little white lies that end up unspoken anyway. It's better for everyone. Everyone, including yourself.


	3. three

A/N: Wow, thanks for such warm reviews! I'm really glad you all enjoy this story so far as it's a great pleasure to write something based on such an ingenious prompt. Seriously, I love to ponder on such ideas! Hope these two small bits come to your expectations but when it comes to angst and happy moment, well. Can't spill the beans just yet, can I? ;)

You see questions in people's eyes as each member of the crew passes you on the corridor, their eyes on your back, nearly fishing into the pockets to know what is happening. Whispering has began, hushed talks silencing themselves the moment you come into the mess hall or stroll down to the cargo bay just to have thousands of questions explode at once.

Need anything, Shepard? Why, you are looking so pale, man, something's bothering you? Are you alright, Commander? Maybe we should change the menu or get you some supplements? Loco, you not gonna faint in the toilet, right?

You are thinner than you used to be as a teenager, cheekbones standing out sharper and casting visible shadows on the rest of your face. Muscles started to diminish a while ago, skin tautening over the lankier bones like white linen on a hospital bed. There's a ghost of the old Shepard enclosed in the mirror every time you look into it, no matter how many times you try to wash the nightmare away with icy cold water. Your hands shake. You feel heavier and more tired after a whole peaceful day than after having slept not a wink in three days only a few months ago. People speak too loudly. Light is too bright in the morning and the silence of the ship does nothing but irks you. You do not go out of your cabin if it is not necessary, if it is no emergency.

You are a walking zombie. A husk with its bowels still intact and a shred of mind left to be toyed with by unreal fantasies.

You try not to appear too changed. The clothing gets anonymously sent to some tailors on Ilium to be taken in, the narcotics and alcohol appear in neat packages directly shipped to private quarters. Everything is well-organized and strictly private. Nobody has to see you rot alive, nobody has to help you deal with whatever haunting dreams. All of this is your own problem. Always has been.

Since the pact with Cerberus, you tend to get messages instead of direct conversations when someone is upset or in need. This time, no matter how hard you'd like to protest, it's not different at all. Liara wants you to eat something healthy, maybe see a human doctor on the Citadel. Tali asks about the core while babbling about the newest ships in the Flotilla and the news she got on your health from the crewmen. Nothing is wrong though, of course it is not. How could it be by someone like you, Shepard, don't be dumb, ladies! You write sloppy and brief replies to each email someone concerned wants to entertain another hollow evening of yours with. Like James with his proposals of a boxing match like in the old times (you can't hold a glass steady, you can't run two flies of stairs without feeling light in the head), Steve and going out to Afterlife (Aria cannot see you with someone familiar, nobody can see the best dealers at the entrance who know you on a first name basis and offer discounts just for the Savior of the Galaxy) or EDI and her questions (your attention span is poorer, words keep fleeing your grasp).

And one day, the supplies end and shipping is not available. You have to go get the needed fix yourself and an excuse for infiltrating a strip club quickly appears on the horizon. There have been a couple of murder cases in the district, no, you'll be fine on your own. You're a Spectre, you'll manage with drunkards, don't worry Garrus (and you can tell he is worried, what with the way he keeps observing you during the meals and after the dullest kinds of missions, as if waiting for you to collapse finally and die of exhaustion).

In the end, you do not have to look for Aria for too long. She is sitting with some human strippers at one of the far corners of the counter, a sea of drinks occupying at least half the surface. She only smiles upon noticing your hunched silhouette elbowing its way through the dancing crowd.


	4. four

„Something new for you or just the usual, Scout boy? Or should I rather say, Mr. Soul of the Party?" The rhythm is too monotonous in your ears, head already nearly split open because of it while she is just smiling her indulgent grin. You hate her. You hate the asari that can pluck at each of your strings the moment she wants to, the moment she feels like doing just that because she grows bored one day.

"I- I need something to make the void go away." Words stumble out of your mouth with no grace and if it wasn't for the drugs, you wouldn't even try to utter them. The saliva feels heavy on the palate, too heavy to be able to think straightly and the mob smacking your back with their outstretched limbs does not help much either. "I need more. I'm out of everything you gave me."

Her eyes grow cold when you finish. She gulps one of the drinks quickly, waving for the women to go dance or sit somewhere else for the moment, you neither know, nor care what the gesture means exactly. You come closer, obscuring her silhouette from the eyes of the dancers, something feeling only as natural as foreign when she whistles at a few Batarians from the other side of the room. No idea how they managed to have heard anything over the noise, they come and empty the contents of their pockets in front of you, their medium armours revealing uncountable amounts of neatly covered pockets and holes full of Red Sand, upgraded forms of human cocaine, synthetic heesh and other goodies.

"Paying now in credits or rather later in nature, Commander?"

Your hands shake when you reach for your Omni-tool, at least ten thousand credits to be spent on things good enough only for the rest of the month. Suddenly though, a hand seizes your wrist and your hips get pushed towards the counter, the grip tight and merciless. Whoever it is, they must be a marine to twist a bone as skillfully and unnoticeably. Or maybe an assassin. You try to struggle but you have no strength. Nobody has noticed anything being wrong yet as Aria sips another drink, looking disinterestedly at the dance floor and the Batarians having gone a few moments earlier.

Then a question ignites itself like a match in your hand. Do you want to have anyone notice a death sentence conducted on you, Shepard? Do you really want that? Maybe it would be better to have your stomach punctured in a nameless club for narcotics than have to go back and keep on pretending that everything is alright, that Kaidan would come back one day and still love someone not even worth to be spat at. That you could fix anything even though it hurts just to wake up and go round the deck with everybody starring when there is nothing to be said. Nothing that could look good enough or sound reasonable to anyone beside yourself.

There are marines dancing nearby, doing those crazy movements people from other walks of life tend to joke about without hesitation. Maybe you could call out to them, maybe they would help a shadow like you, maybe they'd just laugh and pretend that nothing wrong is happening. After all, you're just Shepard. You are not invincible. Once dead, later resurrected, you can end up dead anyway any minute, even this very one.

"Aria, stop selling such shit to people. This man is barely able to stand on his feet, you're just using his weakness against him." The voice is muffled, sounding somehow familiar, a faint smell of cologne mixing in the air with the renewing itself constantly odor of sweat. The hand grasping your wrist loosens somewhat, moving to grab at the arm. "It's below even your standards, we both know that."

When Aria glances at the man behind you, she does not look alarmed, quite the contrary. Her lips quiver as if she was about to laugh out loud.

"Below my standards? I'm certainly not in the mood for this." Her unsettling grimace only deepens when she moves her eyes to you. "Shepard, is there something you haven't told this Scout friend of yours yet?" She then huffs to herself humourlessly. "Just don't start a brawl in here, my boys have just finished washing the bloodstains from the morning."


	5. five and six

A prolonging moment of silence follows. The asari is looking disinterestedly between the two of you, her dark blue eyes reflecting the neon lights in their sclera.

"The hell you are talking about?" The man finally utters, his voice hushed down, all the previous fervor and rightful anger gone from it. If you didn't know better, you'd think it was astonishment and doubt that started to creep into it. Who would care for someone as broken as one of those china porcelain dolls people stopped producing two hundred years ago, though? Why? "Are you being high on the trash you sell?"

Aria just smiles while you cease standing in one place like a stick and start trying to discreetly break free.

"I have better things to do, thank you, soldier boy."

Your black civilian hoody, other than the one with N7 emblemates, slowly slips from the slackened momentarily grasp and the moment you see the chance, you make the break for it. A nicely aimed push and an elbow to the stomach take the guy by surprise and with a dull guttural groan, he backs off, giving you a clear way towards the crowd. You'll pay Aria later, everything you need secured deep within the pockets already and she seems to acknowledge that with a swift nod of her head you register within the corner of your eye. You don't hesitate even for a second and quickly plunge forward, sweaty skin pulsating all around you, dancers inviting you with their hips further and further into the centre of the whole club. Asari, turians, humans. A few drells. You get smacked and grabbed by a few but you don't mind, you won't mind anything that enables you to find the exit. You dare to glance back only once or twice, the lights making it impossible to see anything clearly. There is no brawny silhouette following you as far as you can say, no one intently looking for a nearly dead body among the fountain of youth and health.

Just as you are about to mix with a bigger group of asari in the west, some hands suddenly grip your shirt on the side and the person spins you roughly around. The lights blinds you for a moment, people pouring in two lines beside you, bumping and cursing and it takes a long moment for everything to settle in.

All of this is unreal. It must be. Maybe the drinks finally got the better of you, maybe the Cerberus' maintenance cycle went rogue and you are hallucinating because of some malfunction of the cybernetics. Maybe you've already poisoned yourself enough not to be able to breath and this is the last picture before having to close the eyes finally and rest.

You feel as if you have just began falling down the stairs and there was just abyss, no solid ground to meet your bones ready to break.

"Shepard?" The quiet whisper sounds much more hollow and is perfectly hearable through the raging music, through the ramblings of the crowd. As the man moves nearer, all the black hair and the stubble, the uniform, even the freckles that look like black ants right above the right brow, everything seems to slightly mist over, unreal. His face, his movements, the wonder in his voice, it's all too much to be just a fantasy.

And then there are hands on your face, cool flesh touching dry lips and shallow cheekbones, tracing lines with thumbs and fingernails on the skin. You'd like to want to run, to move somewhere and maybe die in a gutter but your muscles seem to have frozen. Wanting to flee, trying to act defiantly is better than not knowing what to do, than staring with wide eyes at a face known for so long and yet seeming foreign all of the sudden.

You'd like for Kaidan to slap you, to hit you and maybe scream that he hates you, that you are nothing but scum now. Demand to know how you could have let yourself fall so low, what you are doing here, who you think you are, what about him, what about anything. Anger would be more welcome, venom and hatred than the emptiness and lostness with which he is gazing at you, trying to decipher something you yourself do not understand now. You want the pain, something known and easy to react to thanks to the Alliance experience.

"I can't believe it."

Lights of the city twist and turn into a mosaic outside of the taxi's window. Blue sky clashes with the pink of the ads and greenish dresses of some waitresses standing on a skyscraper's roof dance along the blackness of the car's interior. Kaidan's palm sweats in-between yours, fingers clenched vice-hard. His profile is unreadable against the glass, head set straight-forward and unmoving. There's a thumb brushing the back of your hand reassuringly from time to time while the buildings roll forward and the radio buzzes on with some industrial noises.

What are you supposed to do now? It's not what it was supposed to be like. There should be peace, not shame and anger at yourself because you can't control things anymore. You can't control anything. Even yourself and the reactions, the memories, the dreams and old hopes that maybe one day, everything would fall into its place.

Your lips quiver while the shoulders start to shake and it's the first time Kaidan glances at you since rushing from the club, basically dragging you out of there by the arm. On the way to the exit some druggy clutched at his arm, trying to deal something she had stored specially for her favourite war hero but could always split in two for a friend of his. He tried to reason with her for a moment and then to shoulder the way and get going. You stood in the background, unmoving. The itch for taking a drag, for swallowing at least a bit of the stuff was strong, branding the thoughts like iron. You've never been strong. Not strong enough to get through Akuze without others falling, to face the Rachni without having nightmares afterwards, to look at the world after being dead and not cringe at the higher sounds and too flashy screens. The pain grew physical, torturous and while Kaidan was still trying not to hurt the girl and yet not to be stranded in the club forever talking to her, you snorted a neat path of some rainbowish powder from an outstretched palm. Heart stopped racing furiously, the blackness encircling your mind diminished slightly. Now though, the trembling has come back. The dose was too little, you need more nowadays to be able to function, sit peacefully and breathe properly. Shakings wreck your body, face sweats and all limbs feel heavier.

It's cold.

The muscles begin to flex uncontrollably and your breath whizzes. You want to hide. It's not what one's life should look like, not what anybody should look at. Before, the pauses have never been this long, there was always something in the back of your pocket, in another cupboard, something stored somewhere away. Just in case. Now, the hunger's been nagging at your head for more than two days, combined with getting to the port and club in time and thinking of a good cover. In the end, the shit got blown off by the major in a second, no matter the time spent previously on tracking down at least a few people Aria had gotten you.

It hurts to think. To feel anything. The void is bigger than it used to be and the sun, instead of shining through, instead of scaring the shadows away, bakes the skin mercilessly. You'd like to run. To get away as soon as possible and dwell onto hopes all the needed time instead of this, this mess nothing can mend. There is no clear path out, no way leading straight into heaven without the pain needed for atonement. Something to shush down the voices, to have a clear head and yet something after which you could later look other's in the eye.

Words spill from your tongue out of order, desperation clinging to the vowels heavily.  
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry for everything, Kaidan. You must be disgusted, you shouldn't be here, I shouldn't have-"

Kaidan does not say anything in return. He brings an arm carefully round your shoulders while you are still muttering and tugs your body close. Your head lolls tiredly onto his chest, the uniform smelling of cologne, a fragrance you've almost completely forgotten by now. You feel tears gather in your eyes as the trembling grows stronger once again, wave coming after wave along with the sensation of phantom temperature dropping. His silhouette's edges are hard against your bones.

"I'm here. Shhh, I am here now."

You start coughing, breathing becoming harder, the air escaping your lungs much too quickly. Is that blood in your mouth? The taste is horrendous, metallic and much too known to be anything different.

Kaidan's hand is hot on your face as he looks alarmed at the material, at your face, his eyes glistening with the light from the buildings and lamps. Things become fuzzy, his voice echoing slightly when he calls out, "Hey, hey Shepard. Shepard, stay with me. Do you hear me? John, say something, just-" He flickers his gaze back onto the sky line, just in time to crash into some desolate vehicles that popped out of nowhere in front of yours. "No, NO!-"

You feel the impact rather than see the collision. With body rolling onto the metal and head bashing the glass sideways, everything smudging away into a pool of white flash pain. Somebody is screaming, somebody is tugging at your arm but nothing seems real enough to open the eyes for. Hallex could make all of this go away, change everything into a pond of ecstasy, a river never meant to run dry. Anything to escape the suffocating sultry air, the blood oozing from your half-opened lips, the wetness round your legs and chest. Shadows start creeping round your vision, obscuring all the little you can see.

Darkness embraces you close, this time noiselessly, almost like a lover and not a foe. You turn to it gladly, happy to be wanted a least for a while.


	6. seven

You are falling. Down the string like a toy, surrounded by darkness, embraced by its slick arms. You feel like screaming but there is no one ready to hear your voice and your chest heaves, tightening round every other breath. Help me, help me please you try to whisper but not a sound leaves your dry lips.

There are colours blooming everywhere. Gigantic flowers hanging from some invisible ceiling, millimeters from touching your bare skin. And then, boom, rivers of orange and yellow intertwine with blackness, blinding you. Someone is half-floating down one of the paths being made, hips moving to and fro from left to right like a pendulum.

Their face is featureless. Just white plastic like and yet shining like mercury material. An outline of mouth and eyes lets you know the thing is facing you, studying your expression. You don't know what to say, feeling the anxiety rising. Sweat trickles in small droplets down your sides as you stand up, straight as a line.

"Shepard." The robot (?) says in a flat voice, tilting its head slightly. It moves closer, coming to stand at an arm distance in front of you. You want to back away but your body collides with something. A one hundred feet glass wall, it reveals. It feels like liquid against your clammy skin, cool and soothing for a moment.

Suddenly tiles begin to materialize underneath your feet, shimmering like diamonds, mirroring the thing's silhouette millions of times. Sounds finally begin to join in, the floor falling onto its place with the accompaniment of thousands of breaking crystals. It hurts to listen to, hurts so much that you scream endlessly, covering your head, ducking the invisible shards.  
You try to catch your breath after some time, finding yourself kneeling on the black tiles. Taking hands from the ears, you look around. The thing observes you with its head askew once again.

"You watched me die." The voice is smooth, breaking at the ending word ever so slightly. The body changes, morphing into some other shape, finally gaining some distinctiveness. Breasts, wider hips. There are brown eyes staring down at you , full lips twisted in an ugly sneer as the thing comes closer and peers into your frightened face, "It was the right choice, wasn't it, Commander?"

She kicks you hard in the face and as you feel the bone breaking, you fall backwards, half-afraid to collide with the wall but nothing meets your back. You lie on the cold floor as Ashley squats at your side. Her face is relaxed, the brownish bun against her neck tightly laced and like in the old times, her expression is blank when she puts her shotgun against your chest.

"I liked you, Skipper. I thought that maybe… We were the same." She half-smiles, delicately playing fingers across your cheek and throat like kittens like to play with a piece of a string. She slams your head onto the tiles, twice or thrice before the lightness settles in your mind for good. The rifle is still pressed against your muscles, making it hard to move, to draw a proper breath. She smiles. "But then the nuke came. It fixed everything, didn't it?"

"Ash, please, please I didn't want that, I tried to save you both, I wanted to, I-" There are streams of colours going to and fro, misting the whole place over, making it hard to distinguish the surroundings from her figure. Words are hard to say, so hard and you stutter, but so many said it wasn't your fault, you wanted to have them both, you wanted to see her afterwards, to be able to say good work, Williams, fucking good work. "Ash, I wanted so much to have you back, I tried, I tried so hard, you know I did-"

"Bullshit, bullshit, you bastard!" And she is sitting on your chest heavily, bringing the gun against your temple, her other hand gripping your jaw so that you cannot pull your eyes from her.

Your heart stops.

She runs her fingers across your nipples, across the rest of your bony chest and then settles for your navel. She circles one of her fingers round it and then moves down, down and down even though you try to smack the hands away, to move away but her other arm is fixed onto your frame and you're so weak, so pitifully weak for a soldier.

She grasps at the material surrounding your hips, twists her fingers round it before diving in, before being kicked at, before you grunt wanting to get rid of her, to shake her somehow off. The metal digs deeper into your artery, feeling the quickening of the pulse. She maneuvers herself closer, brining the gun higher, fixing it so that it buries deep within the ligaments on your neck. You feel the shame of being treated such way, the fear of not knowing what will happen and yet, the warmth and spreading wetness can mean only one thing. It's not like normal people react to such circumstances, no doubt but when do normal people end up speaking to their comrades' long ago buried corpses? Ashley knows what is happening, of course she knows because that is what she had in store for you from the sheer beginning, right? She observes you for a long moment before lowering herself nearly entirely onto your chest.

"I saw the way you looked at him, the way the two of you talked. The way you run from me, oh Captain, my Captain. Two beautiful biotic boys in blue. Both out of reach."

She smiles lazily before flickering her eyes to the side for a moment. Then she presses a hard hand, calloused and bruised against your erection slowly pulsating underneath her spread thighs.  
And you are gaping at her, all the pain forgotten, the shock twisted into every feature as if done so with a knife, her touch so foreign. Your eyes close as the sensation of her hand working up and down melts the other senses away, as you focus solely on her, as her words start to sink in, as the blackness starts creeping round the corners once again.

"Stop." You mutter, trying to pry the hands away, trying to think of something different. Only one person can touch you like this, only one person is allowed this close. "I said, stop it."

She moves higher and brings her hand round one of your ears before whispering with a false cheery note, "I died 'cause you preferred men, wasn't that true, Commander? If I had a dick, I'd be the one in your bed now."

She laughs, by God how loud she laughs. Then cocks the shotgun and presses it into the artery once again.

You feel the rifle but register nothing else, neither the fingers pumping and stroking your crotch, nor the words she keeps on saying, keeps on whispering as if any of them could ever matter.

She's a dead body so why does she talk, why does she visit you and states questions you yourself have faced before. It was nothing like that, no, she was a soldier just like you and Kaidan, the three of you the only active humans on board. She was a soldier and knew what would come. She knew, you knew, Kaidan knew. It was all Saren's fault, you tried to gather everyone together, to save her but the geth came and the rest had to flee. There was nothing you could have done. Nothing more.

Her hands keep roaming round your body, her own twisting and turning like a flame with the gun still in place. You want to stop it, to have her gone but every time you try to push her off, the rifle gets pushed higher and closer, skillfully maneuvered as not to do any harm to herself but blow only you to pieces. Her fingers are alien, unwelcome.

But why did you choose Kaidan in the end and not her? What would have happened differently then, what kind of a woman would Ashley prove herself to be, who would you have ended up if not with him, what kind of sun would there be for you? Would she have faced Cerberus with you, would she have been there when nothing made sense, when the mayhem scared you so badly you wanted nothing but to shush everything down with alcohol during shore leaves? What would she do, what would the world be like without Kaidan waiting there somewhere, what would you have done without him?

Would you have loved Ashley if she hadn't died?

"Stop." You whisper hoarsely. Tears are streaming down the side of your face, cold and salty. "Please, stop."

The weight disappears from your stomach suddenly and there is that robot-like creature peering down at you once again. You try to calm down your racing heart as it walks around slowly, the rattle of its heels the only hearable sound in the whole empty place. You want to die, die, die, nothing more.

"Shepard."


End file.
